Jon Boden: Artist of the Month Interview

Jon Boden has spent much of the last decade or so working on a proposed trilogy of ambitious concept albums about a post-climate change world. The first two parts of the trilogy – Songs From The Floodplain (2009) and Afterglow (2017) – were lauded by critics and loved by fans, so it wouldn’t have been outrageous to suggest that his next move would be to release the third and final act. But those who have followed Boden’s career with Bellowhead, the Remnant Kings, Spiers and Boden or any of the countless collaborative projects he has been involved in, will know that choosing the obvious path is rarely part of the plan. So while Rose In June – his new album with the Remnant Kings – does share some themes (and indeed some songs) with the Afterglow/Floodplain project, it is stylistically something of a left turn, and very much a stand-alone work that ranks among the most accomplished, passionate and polished of his releases to date.

Why then, at a time when climate change is at the forefront of the news media, did Boden choose not to pursue that particular avenue this time around? ‘Well firstly I’m not ready to do the third album yet,’ he explains. ‘I write in a weird way in that I basically don’t write anything for a couple of years but just mull stuff over, and then sit down and write it all very quickly. So I can feel that that moment hasn’t arrived yet. I guess one of the big things is that people at gigs kept asking which album Rose In June was on and I had to keep saying “we haven’t recorded it yet.” There was just a lot of cool stuff that we were playing in the live set that wasn’t available on CD so it felt important to get into the studio with it all. Similarly, for the re-records of the Floodplain tracks – all felt really strong live and pretty different feel to the album.’ This goes some way to explaining the sheer energy present on the album. The new versions of the older songs have a tightness honed through repeated live performance, and the joy in those performances comes through impressively on the recorded versions.

Boden has always been alert to the possibilities of other musical forms besides folk, and Rose In June is one of his most rock-influenced albums to date. He credits this partly to his choice of musicians, and in particular Richard Warren on electric guitar: ‘A lot of that is about having Rich in the band. If you’ve got a great guitarist in the band, you want to use him. I am interested in folk-rock as a genre. Some of the best, most inventive revival folk music has been under that banner. Also some of the naffest, laziest music too so it’s kind of an intriguingly tricky area to navigate.’

He seems to have navigated those tricky waters pretty well, and thanks to the album’s producer – the very much in-demand Andy Bell – Rose In June has a crispness and clarity of sound that is remarkable considering the range of musicians it accommodates. Boden is quick to praise his producer: ‘He’s absolutely brilliant at getting great band performances and finding an overall feel that really works. My inclination in the studio is always to build stuff up – add overdubs, fill out the corners. It’s a bit of a bad habit really. Andy’s great at keeping a clear head and broad focus for the session as a whole.’

With Bellowhead, Boden played as part of a huge ensemble, and he seems to have replicated that to a certain extent with the ten-piece Remnant Kings. I am keen to know what draws him to working with such a wide array of musicians, and does this approach present any problems in recording or touring? And does solo performing/recording present markedly different challenges?

‘I like working with written arrangements. It means you can get little details in and know that they won’t get suffocated in the rehearsal-arrangement process. I hate it when I have a clear sense of what a song should sound like and by the end of a rehearsal, it sounds completely different. Often good but different, but I still hate it! Control freak basically. Yes touring a big band is tricky, but fun. Solo is much more taxing in the moment of performance, but logistically a lot simpler.’

While Rose In June doesn’t have an immediately obvious overarching political theme, there are nevertheless moments that seem significant to contemporary events, and Boden is keen to explain some of these. In the liner notes, he describes Leviathan as having a Swedish feel, and he is not reticent in explaining why he chose to include it. While he concedes that you wouldn’t necessarily confuse it with a Swedish folk tune (it was something that he stumbled across while he was ‘mucking around’), ‘it was quite interesting harmonically in the way some Swedish tunes are. No not really deliberate in that way, but my decision to flag it up in the sleevenotes certainly was. I’m a diehard Remainer. Federalist in fact. So yes, my inclination post-Brexit is to point to the commonalities of European culture. Funnily enough, I felt more the opposite way before the vote – I was more interested in what makes different styles individual. It’s like if we are a modern, forward-looking, progressive country, it is healthy for us to embrace the idiosyncrasies of our own country. If we turn into backward-looking, regressive, nihilistic public-school autocracy, then it feels like all of that is tainting our culture by association. Maybe I’ll get over it though.’

The implied cosmopolitanism of Leviathan isn’t the only political statement on the album. Beating The Bounds seems like both an iconoclastic dig at the lack of inclusivity in certain folk conventions, and a love letter to those very same conventions. Does he think that folk music needs to be more inclusive, and if so, how can this be achieved? ‘Yeah, it’s quite an odd song that one! I think it’s more about how we need to keep a firm hold on traditional rituals; otherwise, they can get used in nefarious ways. We saw this a few years back with the BNP encouraging its members to join morris sides. Fortunately, that didn’t go anywhere, but it is a concern.’ He acknowledges that this might seem to contradict his previous answer. There are, perhaps, no easy solutions to the problem of how to preserve our heritage inclusively.

The album has its lighter moments. There is a wonderful cover of Kate Bush’s Hounds of love, arranged for concertina, and Boden is adamant that ‘all 80s pop songs sound better on four concertinas.’ This statement might not be as tongue-in-cheek as it appears: when pressed on whether there are likely to be any more concertina cover versions in the future, his answer is an unequivocally affirmative ‘oh yes.’

And while we are on the subject of Boden’s plans for the future, I ask him if we are likely to hear the final piece of the Floodplain trilogy any time soon. He has some encouraging news on that front. ‘I’m hoping that may be nearing the end of its gestation period soon.’ If Rose In June is anything to go by, it promises to be something special, but if you can’t wait that long, Boden is touring with a six-piece version of the Remnant Kings in the second half of November, with added strings and brass for the gig in London’s Union Chapel.

Read our review of Rose in June here

Rose In June is out now on Hudson Records

ORDER VIA HUDSON RECORDS (Signed CD/LP)